In a Thursday appearance on Tuscaloosa radio Tide 100.9's "The Game with Ryan Fowler," U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) declared that a lack of regulating name, image and likeness (NIL) would cause a massive shift in the college football world.
Tuberville, the former head coach at Auburn, recently filed legislation with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) to regulate NIL. He predicted that if NIL isn't settled, then college football would "break away" from the NCAA.
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"If we can get it done, it will be a miracle, but we've got to do something because if we stay down the path we're going, we're going to lose college sports as we all know it," Tuberville warned.
"If the NCAA can't handle this, college football is going to have to break away from them and do their own deal and do a super league or something and let the big boys go their own way and then have a junior varsity league ... with the other schools," he continued. "But the NCAA - they really can't handle football. [They] never have been able to, but they're going to have to get involved now. If they don't, they're going to have to break away."
Tuberville emphasized he was "all for" college athletes being paid to play sports but described the current landscape of college athletics as a "disaster" and the "Wild, Wild West."
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